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1917 (2019 film)
| writer = | starring = | music = Thomas Newman | cinematography = Roger Deakins | editing = Lee Smith | studio = | distributor = | released = | runtime = 119 minutes | country = | language = English | budget = $90–100 million | gross = $292.6 million }} 1917 is a 2019 British war film directed, co-written, and produced by Sam Mendes. The film stars George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, with Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Richard Madden, Claire Duburcq, Colin Firth, and Benedict Cumberbatch in supporting roles. It is based in part on an account told to Mendes by his paternal grandfather, Alfred Mendes. The film tells the story of two young British soldiers during the First World War who are ordered to deliver a message calling off an attack doomed to fail soon after the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line during Operation Alberich in 1917. This message is especially important to one of the young soldiers, as his brother is taking part in the pending attack. The project was officially announced in June 2018, with MacKay and Chapman signing on in October and the rest of the cast the following March. Filming took place from April to June 2019 in the UK, with cinematographer Roger Deakins and editor Lee Smith using long takes to have the entire film appear as two continuous shots (though media accounts commonly state that it is one). 1917 premiered in the UK on 4 December 2019 and was released theatrically in the United States on 25 December by Universal Pictures, and in the United Kingdom on 10 January 2020 by Entertainment One Films. The film received praise for Mendes's direction, the performances, cinematography, musical score, editing, sound design and realism. Among its accolades, the film received ten nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three, including Best Cinematography. It also won Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director at the 77th Golden Globe Awards, and at the 73rd British Academy Film Awards won a leading seven, including Best Film and Best Direction. It also won the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture, and Mendes won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film. Plot On 6 April 1917, aerial reconnaissance has observed that the German army, which has pulled back from a sector of the Western Front in northern France, is not in retreat but has made a strategic withdrawal to the new Hindenburg Line, where they are waiting to overwhelm the British with artillery. In the British trenches, with field telephone lines cut, two young British soldiers, Lance Corporals Tom Blake and William Schofield, a veteran of the Somme, are ordered by General Erinmore to carry a message to Colonel Mackenzie of the Second Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, calling off a scheduled attack that would jeopardise the lives of 1,600 men, including Blake's brother Lieutenant Joseph Blake. Schofield and Blake cross no man's land to reach the abandoned German trenches. In an underground barracks, they discover a booby-trap tripwire. This is triggered by a rat, and the explosion almost kills Schofield, but Blake saves him, and the two escape. They arrive at an abandoned farmhouse, where they witness a German plane being shot down in flames. Schofield and Blake drag the injured pilot from the plane. Schofield proposes a mercy kill, but Blake insists they help him; however, the pilot stabs Blake and is shot dead by Schofield. Schofield comforts Blake as he dies, promising to complete the mission and to write to Blake's mother. Schofield is then picked up by a passing British unit. A destroyed canal bridge near Écoust-Saint-Mein prevents British lorries from crossing. Schofield uses what is left of the bridge to cross alone, and comes under fire from a German sniper. He and the sniper shoot each other simultaneously; the sniper is killed, while Schofield is knocked unconscious. He regains consciousness at night. Under fire, Schofield stumbles into the hiding place of a French woman with an infant. She treats his wound, and he comforts the infant by reciting a poem, giving the woman his canned food and milk from the farm. Continuing, Schofield is shot at. He meets more German soldiers, strangling one and pushing past another who is inebriated. Other soldiers give chase, but he escapes by jumping into a river. He is swept over a waterfall before reaching the riverbank by morning. In the forest, he finds D Company of the 2nd Devons, which is in the last wave of the attack. As the company starts to move toward the front, Schofield tries to reach Colonel Mackenzie. Realising that the trenches are too crowded for him to make it to Mackenzie in time, Schofield sprints across the battlefield, just as the infantry begins its charge. He forces his way into meeting Mackenzie, who reads the message and reluctantly calls off the attack. Mackenzie says that, while the cancellation offers a temporary reprieve, command will likely change its orders in a week. Schofield is told that Joseph was in the first wave, and he searches for him among the wounded, finding him unscathed. Joseph is upset to hear of his brother's death, but thanks Schofield for his efforts. Schofield gives Joseph his brother's rings and dog tag, and asks to write to their mother about Blake's heroics, to which Joseph agrees. Schofield sits under a tree, looking at photographs of his wife and two daughters. Cast * George MacKay as Lance Corporal William "Will" Schofield * Dean-Charles Chapman as Lance Corporal Thomas "Tom" Blake * Mark Strong as Captain Smith * Andrew Scott as Lieutenant Leslie * Richard Madden as Lieutenant Joseph Blake * Claire Duburcq as Lauri * Colin Firth as General Erinmore * Benedict Cumberbatch as Colonel Mackenzie * Daniel Mays as Sergeant Sanders * Adrian Scarborough as Major Hepburn * Jamie Parker as Lieutenant Richards * Michael Jibson as Lieutenant Hutton * Richard McCabe as Colonel Collins * Chris Walley as Private Bullen * Nabhaan Rizwan as Sepoy Jondalar * Michael Cornelius as Private Cornelius Production Development and casting Amblin Partners and New Republic Pictures were announced to have acquired the project in June 2018, with Sam Mendes directing, and co-writing the screenplay alongside Krysty Wilson-Cairns. Tom Holland was reported to be in talks for the film in September 2018, though ultimately was not involved, and in October, Roger Deakins was set to reunite with Mendes as cinematographer. George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman entered negotiations to star the same month. Thomas Newman was hired to compose the score in March 2019. The same month, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Richard Madden, Andrew Scott, Daniel Mays, Adrian Scarborough, Jamie Parker, Nabhaan Rizwan, and Claire Duburcq joined the cast in supporting roles. Writing In August 2019, Mendes stated, "It's the story of a messenger who has a message to carry. And that's all I can say. It lodged with me as a child, this story or this fragment and obviously I've enlarged it significantly. But it has that at its core." In Time in 2020, Mendes stated that the writing involved some risk-taking: "I took a calculated gamble, and I'm pleased I did because of the energy you get just from driving forward (in the narrative), in a war that was fundamentally about paralysis and stasis." The ideas for a script, which Mendes wrote with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, came from the story that Mendes's grandfather, Alfred Mendes, a native of Trinidad who was a messenger for the British on the Western Front, had told him. Mendes stated: "I felt an obligation to honour my grandfather. It’s important to remember they were fighting for a free and unified Europe. Good to be reminded of that now." Filming Roger Deakins was cinematographer for the film, reuniting with Mendes for their fourth collaboration, having first worked together on Jarhead in 2005. Filming was accomplished with long takes and elaborately choreographed moving camera shots to give the effect of two continuous takes. Although media accounts often refer to the story as being told in only one shot, the story cuts to black one hour and six minutes into the film, when Schofield is knocked unconscious, and fades in upon his regaining consciousness after night has fallen. Mendes explained why he made this decision thus: Well, it was to do with time actually. It was to do with the fact that I wanted the movie to go from afternoon to dusk, and then from night into dawn. I wanted it to be in two movements. I wanted to take a movie, the movie tonally somewhere very unexpected. And I thought it was impossible if I stayed in the same naturalistic world that the first two thirds of the movie occupies. I wanted to take it somewhere more like a hallucination. Somewhere more surreal, almost dream-like. And horrifying too. 1917 was the first film to be shot with the Arri Alexa Mini LF digital cinema camera. Deakins wanted to use a camera with a large format image sensor, but thought that the original Alexa LF was too large and heavy to capture the intimate shots he wanted. Arri provided him with a prototype of the Mini LF two months before filming was set to begin, and two more cameras a week before. His lenses were Arri Signature Primes, of which he used two focal lengths: a 40 mm lens for most of the film, and a wider 35 mm for scenes in the tunnels and bunkers, to emphasise feelings of claustrophobia. Filming began on 1 April 2019 and continued through June 2019 in Wiltshire, Hankley Common in Surrey and Govan, Scotland, as well as at Shepperton Studios. Concern was raised over the planned filming on Salisbury Plain by conservationists who felt the production could disturb potentially undiscovered remains, requesting a survey before any set construction began. Some shots required the use of as many as 500 background extras. Sections of the film were also shot near Low Force, on the River Tees, Teesdale in June 2019. The production staff had to install signs warning walkers in the area not to be alarmed at the prosthetic bodies strewn around the site. Music Release The film premiered on 4 December 2019 at the 2019 Royal Film Performance. The film began a limited release in the United States and Canada on 25 December 2019 in eleven venues. This made it eligible for 2020 awards, including the 77th Golden Globes, held on 5 January 2020, where the film won both the Golden Globe for Best Dramatic Motion Picture and Best Director for Mendes. Reception Box office , 1917 has grossed $134.8 million in the United States and Canada and $157.8 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $292.6 million, against a production budget of $90–100 million. In the US, the film made $251,000 from 11 venues on its first day of limited release. It went on to have a limited opening weekend of $570,000, and a five-day gross of $1 million, for an average of $91,636 per-venue. The film would go on to make a total of $2.7 million over its 15 days of limited release. It then expanded wide on 10 January, making $14 million on its first day, including $3.25 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to gross $36.5 million for the weekend (beating the original projections of $25 million), becoming the first film to dethrone Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker at the box office. In its second weekend of wide release the film made $22 million (and $26.8 million over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday), finishing second behind newcomer Bad Boys for Life. It then made $15.8 million and $7.7 million the following two weekends, remaining in second both times. Critical response On review aggregation Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 398 reviews, with an average rating of 8.38/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Hard-hitting, immersive, and an impressive technical achievement, 1917 captures the trench warfare of World War I with raw, startling immediacy." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 based on 57 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, and PostTrak reported it received an average 4.5 out of 5 from viewers, with 69% of people saying they would definitely recommend it. Several critics named the film among the best of 2019, including Kate Erbland of IndieWire and Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter. Karl Vick, writing for Time magazine, found the film to stand up favourably when compared to Stanley Kubrick's WWI film Paths of Glory, stating, "motion pictures do require a certain amount of motion, and the major accomplishment of 1917, the latest film to join the canon, maybe that its makers figured out what the generals could not: a way to advance." Rubin Safaya of AwardsWatch.com described the movie as "A visceral experience and visual masterclass." Writing for the Hindustan Times, Rohan Naahar stated, "I can only imagine the effect 1917 will have on audiences that aren't familiar with the techniques Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins are about to unleash upon them." In his review for NPR, Justin Chang was less positive. He agreed the film was a "mind-boggling technical achievement" but did not think it was that spectacular overall, as Mendes’s style with its impression of a continuous take “can be as distracting as it is immersive.” Historical accuracy , March 1917]] The film was inspired by Operation Alberich, a German withdrawal to new positions on the shorter and more easily defended Hindenburg Line, which took place between 9 February and 20 March 1917. However, the main and supporting characters all appear to be fictional. Writing in the New York Times, Cathy Tempelsman argues that the storyline offers a “dangerously misleading” picture of the War, suggesting “a concern for the sanctity of human life from the top down”, whereas the reality was “an appalling indifference as the British high command sent hundreds of thousands of their young men to die”. She adds that the “false heroics and filmmaking feats of wonder“ serve to provide an “escape from the true carnage of the ‘Great War’”, and that in reality the scale of the casualties was such that the potential loss of 1,600 men would not have excited the response portrayed in the film. According to military historian Jeremy Banning, "It made no sense, as the film depicts, to have some battalions nine miles beyond the former German line and others seemingly unaware of whether this line was manned. ... As for the assault by the Devons, no unit would attack without adequate artillery support". The number of black soldiers serving in the British Army (rather than colonial regiments) during the World War I is unknown but is likely to have been negligibly low. The Devonshire Regiment was never brigaded with any West Indian or African units (it spent the war in 8th Division). Over 15,000 men from the Caribbean enlisted, including black Caribbeans living in Britain, and by 1915 it was decided to group them together into a single regiment, named the British West Indies Regiment. Indian Sikhs would have served in their own regiments as part of the British Indian Army, not as individuals in the ranks of British regiments and Corps. By 1917 the Indian infantry had been withdrawn from the Western Front and sent to the Middle East; the Indian cavalry remained. Top ten lists 1917 appeared on many critics' year-end top-ten lists: * 1st Sam Allard, Cleveland Scene * 1st Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post * 1st Tim Miller, Cape Cod Times * 1st Lawrence Toppman, The Charlotte Observer * 1st Mal Vincent, The Virginian-Pilot * 1st Sandy Kenyon, WABC-TV * 2nd Randy Myers, The Mercury News * 3rd Matt Goldberg, Collider * 3rd Jason Rantz, KTTH * 3rd Mara Reinstein, Us Weekly * 3rd Chuck Yarborough, Cleveland Plain Dealer * 4th Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press * 4th Benjamin Lee, The Guardian * 4th Brian Truitt, USA Today * 5th Staff consensus, Consequence of Sound * 5th Bruce Miller, Sioux City Journal * 6th Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle * 6th Peter Travers, Rolling Stone * 6th Ethan Alter, Marcus Errico and Kevin Polowy, Yahoo! Entertainment * 6th Chris Bumbray, JoBlo * 6th Peter Howell, Toronto Star * 7th David Crow, Den of Geek * 7th Tom Gliatto, People * 8th Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter * 8th Jeffrey M. Anderson, San Francisco Examiner * 8th Anita Katz, San Francisco Examiner * 8th Col Needham, IMDb * 9th Richard Whittaker, The Austin Chronicle * 9th Dann Gire, Chicago Daily Herald * 9th Mike Scott, New Orleans Times-Picayune * 10th Max Weiss, Baltimore Magazine Accolades 1917 received ten nominations at the 92nd Academy Awards, winning for Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, and Cinematography. It received three nominations at the 77th Golden Globe Awards and won two awards: for Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director. It also received eight nominations at the 25th Critics' Choice Awards, winning three awards, including Best Director, and nine nominations at the 73rd British Academy Film Awards, winning the most awards — seven, including Best Film, Best Director and Outstanding British film. It was chosen by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of the year. See also * Real time * Dunkirk * Birdman References External links * * * }} Category:2010s action drama films Category:2010s historical films Category:2010s war drama films Category:2019 films Category:Amblin Entertainment films Category:American action drama films Category:American epic films Category:American films Category:American historical films Category:American war drama films Category:Best Drama Picture Golden Globe winners Category:British action drama films Category:British epic films Category:British films Category:British historical films Category:British war drama films Category:DreamWorks Pictures films Category:Films directed by Sam Mendes Category:Film scores by Thomas Newman Category:Films set in 1917 Category:Films shot at Shepperton Studios Category:Films shot in Scotland Category:Films shot in Surrey Category:Films shot in Wiltshire Category:Reliance Entertainment films Category:Universal Pictures films Category:Western Front (World War I) films Category:Films that won the Best Sound Mixing Academy Award Category:Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography Academy Award Category:Films that won the Best Visual Effects Academy Award